Ernst Karel is Assistant Director of the Film Study Center, and Lab Manager for the Media Anthropology Lab, a joint venture of the Department of Anthropology and the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard. In his audio projects, he works with analog electronics and with location recordings, sometimes separately, sometimes in combination, to create pieces that move between the abstract and the documentary. As an improvisor and performer on trumpet and/or analog electronics, or as a composer, he has participated in recordings released on the Apraxia, Thrill Jockey, Locust, BoxMedia, Truckstop, Drag City, Lucky Kitchen, Bottrop-Boy, Sedimental, Crouton, and Formed record labels, among others.

Karel collaborates with video and filmmakers as a sound recordist, mixer, and sound designer. He also works as a mastering engineer, having preparing a wide variety of material for publication on CD, including folk music from various cultures, spoken word, new music, and electronic music; he also digitally remastered several Folkways recordings for first-time reissue on CD on the Locust label, including recordings by Ilhan Mimaroglu, Tod Dockstader, Gamelan Son of Lion, the East New York Ensemble de Music, and the David Nzomo Trio. Before coming to Harvard, Karel worked as a sound engineer in various capacities for Chicago Public Radio, at the Chicago Cultural Center, and freelance.

Karel received his BA from the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington in Seattle, in Comparative Religion. He received his MA and PhD from the Committee on Human Development at the University of Chicago, where his doctoral research crossed between the disciplines of cultural psychology, anthropology, and ethnomusicology. His fieldwork-based dissertation, Kerala Sound Electricals: Amplified sound and cultural meaning in South India, was a study in the anthropology of sound.

More information at ek.klingt.org.